Democrats sweep every Texas statewide office and take control of the statehouse

Talarico joins Cruz in Senate as Republicans keep a state Senate majority

Texas Democrats won every statewide office and control of the statehouse in this week’s election, rejecting the political agenda of President Trump and the state’s Republican leadership despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to defend that agenda. The sweep came after election cycles in which Texas Democrats had overestimated their chances of victory.

Democrats now control a U.S. Senate seat, the statehouse, the governor’s office, the lieutenant governor’s office, the attorney general’s office, the agriculture commissioner, the comptroller, the land commissioner, the railroad commissioner, four state Supreme Court seats and three criminal appeals court seats. The consequences will extend well beyond Texas, reshaping state politics and creating new challenges for Republicans in Washington and at home.

“On no Bingo card did I have the entire slate going down,” said Dade Phelan, a retiring Republican state representative and former Speaker of the House who has been critical of Trump and the far right. “It was just a wholesale extinction of Republicans last night. It was shocking.”

Anger at the party in power drove independents, Hispanic voters, young voters and onetime Republicans to swing leftward in force, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Democrat James Talarico will join Sen. Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate, making the Republican the lone holder of high-profile statewide elected office in Texas. Cruz, who has long eyed a presidential run in 2028, faces a changed political landscape at home and must decide whether to work with his new Democratic colleagues. If he ran for the White House and won, incoming Democratic Gov. Gina Hinojosa would hold the power to appoint his temporary replacement.

Cruz has called the Republican losses a “blue tsunami” and a “Watergate-level repudiation,” and he has vowed that Republicans will reclaim the state by rebuilding “as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives.”

Hinojosa will inherit an office where three-term Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has spent more than a decade consolidating executive power, using emergency declarations and other tools to exert greater control over state government. Appointments including the secretary of state and seats on the state’s public university governing boards could give her opportunities to reshape state government. She will be able to appoint new regents to the University of Texas system at a time when conservative leadership has been rewriting the education system of the state.

Hinojosa campaigned on increasing funding for public schools and opposing the private-school vouchers that Republicans pushed through the legislature. On the campaign trail, she repeatedly vowed to fire Education Commissioner Mike Morath on her first day in office.

Democrat Vikki Goodwin, who ousted Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, will assume a post with significant authority over the state Senate, including naming committees, setting rules and controlling which bills reach debate. Republican state senators could change the chamber’s rules to limit Goodwin’s powers before she takes office: the Senate adopts its rules at the start of each legislative session and could roll back some of the lieutenant governor’s authority as presiding officer.

Republicans will still hold a majority in the state Senate when the legislative session begins in January. With that majority, they can block appointments and legislative priorities from Hinojosa and Democrats, and any funding for the governor’s policy priorities must clear the chamber.

Whether Talarico and other Democrats can help return Texas to the era of bipartisanship it enjoyed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the state was more competitive, remains to be seen. Talarico campaigned on a message of inclusiveness and, since winning, has doubled down on reaching across the political spectrum. “I’m going to build bridges with all of my 99 colleagues in the U.S. Senate,” he said in a CNN interview Wednesday. “I’m going to build bridges or at least try to with President Trump, because my mandate is to deliver for working people in my state.”

Cruz wrote on X that he is willing to work with Talarico and other Democrats “when they are willing to be reasonable,” citing flood relief for the Hill Country and a space academy for the state as areas of potential cooperation.

Hinojosa announced at a news conference Thursday that her transition team includes Republican Ernest Bailes, a former state lawmaker who lost his seat to an Abbott-endorsed primary challenger after he did not support Abbott’s preferred school-voucher plan.

The proof that Democrats can be competitive in Texas stands to upend power dynamics in future elections. Texas has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980 and is considered vital to any GOP electoral college win. The shift makes the state a central battleground in the 2028 presidential race and the elections that follow, drawing more attention from both parties than in years past.

The battle for Texas will come with a massive price tag. Advertising costs in this year’s Senate race topped $573 million, the most expensive nonpresidential race on record, according to Ad Impact — a preview of the money both parties could pour into the state in future cycles, and of the pressure it could put on national campaign budgets.